


A Penny on its Edge

by orphan_account



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 04:10:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4507221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Don’t tell me you’re thinking of setting up another proxy.”</i>
</p><p>  <i>“I wouldn’t worry about that,” says Joshua. After all, he has a perfectly serviceable one trained up already.</i></p><p>Joshua goes out for coffee, visits a record shop, and weighs the pros and cons of murdering Neku again. Set a few months post-game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Penny on its Edge

WildKat is closed. As usual.

There’s a god sitting at the counter.

"Just a little game,” he says, “to see if Shibuya’s not fading into obscurity again.”

Hanekoma puts down his coffee cup. “Joshua.”

“Really, Hanekoma, you used to call me your Composer. What happened to that, hmm?”

“You used to call me your Producer,” says Hanekoma. There are a few coffee rings staining the sketchpad on the counter. Most of the time, Hanekoma idly scratches away at the sketchpad when he listens to Joshua talk. He is not doing so now. “Stop avoiding the point, Josh.”

“ _Josh._ How quaint, _Mr. H._ Are we all Neku now?”

Hanekoma says nothing, but his hand comes down to rest on a pin. It’s new to Joshua, but it’s splashed with Hanekoma’s own graffiti and there’s a little image of an iron cage scratched into its side. Joshua knows that Hanekoma is powerful in his own right, Fallen or not, and that even a Composer might have difficulty breaking out of a psych set up by an Angel.

“I’m not going to let you do this, Joshua. Shibuya is fine as it is, and you know it. It’s growing, it’s thriving–”

“It doesn’t hurt to check,” says Joshua. 

“Don’t tell me you’re thinking of setting up another proxy.”

Ah, so _this_ was what it was about. Was that guilt Joshua was hearing? Or perhaps Hanekoma had gotten attached. How cute.

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” says Joshua.

Hanekoma’s hand relaxes, minutely, on the pin, but his eyes are still hard. Joshua hasn’t made any promises yet.

“If you put Shibuya in danger like that again,” says Hanekoma, but he doesn’t finish. Hanekoma has always been weak at issuing threats; he always prefers to pull his stints as puppeteer from the sidelines and maintain plausible deniability.

“If my dear district hasn’t gone stale,” says Joshua, “that won’t be a problem, will it?”

He phases down into the UG and halfway across the district before Hanekoma can do a thing about it.

Of course Hanekoma shouldn’t worry about Joshua setting up another proxy. He has a perfectly serviceable one trained up already.

 

* * *

 

Upon teleporting to Towa Records, Joshua is immediately assaulted with a blast of music. And Music. With Neku, the two tend to coincide rather explosively.

The music is coming from a portable CD player propped up against the wall of the record store. In the UG, Joshua can pick out the harmony that Neku’s soul is giving off in waves. It’s completely synced, running counterpoint to the rhythmic handclaps on the track. Neku’s Music isn’t the strongest Joshua has ever heard-- nothing compared to his own-- but it’s definitely unique, even when it’s riding another wavelength of sound like it is now.

Joshua leans against a wall, invisible to all except the occasional, distracted Wall Reaper, and watches Neku work.

The outer wall of Towa Records was empty the last time Joshua saw it. Now it’s a mess of chalk sketches. Neku isn’t wearing his usual J of the M ensemble– he’s wearing a hoodie that looks baggy enough to be one of Beat’s and a pair of paint-stained gray sweats. White and yellow chalk dust is smeared all over his hands, and there are four unopened paint cans at his feet.

Neku leans down and pries the lid off a can. The paint inside is a liquid black.

The main focus of the sketch on the wall of Towa Records is a girl’s face, her eyes closed in concentration and her hands pressed to the sides of her head over a pair of headphones. Under her collarbone is written the word FOCUS in jagged letters, the edges of the word blending into the lines of her long hair and dripping down to fade into the bordering cacophony of sketches.

Neku’s lines with the brush are stark and sharp-edged, filling in all of his shadows and outlines with the dark paint. He’s making a mistake a minute, deviating wildly from his chalked outline, but there’s an actual smile on his face. Joshua catches flashes of it, when Neku turns around to wipe paint off his fingers with a rag, or when he leans down to dip the brush back into the paint bucket.

There’s a familiar four-chamber pistol tucked halfway into the pocket of Joshua’s jeans, its silhouette obscured by the trailing hem of his shirt. Josh taps it with his index finger and hums as he looks over the growing tracery of the work. It’s over two hours before Neku looks over his half-finished outline, wipes his hands on his ratty sweatpants, and pokes his head into the shop to tell the cashier he’s taking a break. He strips off the hoodie and ties it around his waist as he walks south, dodging pedestrians all the while like the Shibuya native he is. The city beats in time with his footsteps. 

Josh shadows him. Neku may have a good deal of Soul left over from the game, but he still doesn’t have nearly enough of it to see a Composer trailing him in the UG. When Neku ducks into the darkness of the Miyashita Park underpass, Josh puts a hand back on the cold metal of his gun and sees an entire week unfold before him.

The moment passes. Neku reaches the end of the underpass and disappears into the sunlight.

Joshua turns and walks back to Towa Records. The mural, unfinished as it is, is already starting to warp the Music on that street, some of the gritty static of the UG creeping in under the still-in-the-sixties nostalgia of the record store. It echoes with the tire skids on the road, the shudders of heat where a shark used to swim.

 

* * *

 

Back at the cafe, Joshua orders a cappuccino (“No tea, Hanekoma? How utterly unrefined of you.”) and refuses to answer any of his Producer’s questions until he’s taken a long sip of his drink.

“I don’t think Shibuya has anything to worry about,” Joshua says at length, setting the cup back down on its saucer.

“What convinced you?”

“Oh, Tin Pin’s gotten a boost in popularity recently. Those tournaments are really bringing new life into the district.”

“Lucky break,” says Hanekoma, too casually. “Hey– I have a new recipe in the works. Want to taste-test? I’ll give you a hundred-yen discount.”

“Not today, my dear Producer,” says Joshua, rising from his seat, “I have work to do. But I’m sure someone will come along in–” he checks his phone– “oh, about five minutes. You had better open the cafe before then.”

“That’s cryptic, even for you.”

Joshua just smirks and leaves, flipping the store sign from _Sorry, We’re Closed_ to _OPEN_ behind him. It wouldn’t do for him to be loitering around the cafe when Neku showed up, after all.

 


End file.
